We asked you, the fine television viewers of America, why you preferred a crap regular season football game to a great playoff baseball game. You responded, justifying your choice for four reasons.

Gambling/Fantasy ramifications:

Meet The Mess:

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Only degenerates bet on baseball while every 9 year old with an internet connection has at least a little money on football.

Tommy:

Fantasy Football. It has made every NFL game important. I'm a Yankees fan, and even I was flipping over to that craptastic game just to see if the Tennessee defense was scoring me any points. Sad but true.

Caddyskack:

How about... MJD vs. Chris Johnson. A lot of fantasy points on the line

Tim:

fantasy football pure and simple, I needed Garrard to have a good game.

Elis-stitches:

Easy, more money to be made betting on the Titans than betting on Baseball. Lets not forget the over/under too. Need to make sure we watch so no one scores because trust me it helps.

sjohnson301001:

It's the gamblers.

Rumor has it, the reason MNF started in the first place was that ABC knew that gamblers who had lost their shirts over the weekend would go ape over the opportunity to chase and make all their losses go away. ABC offered them this "one last chance", which was brilliant, and that's why MNF is still getting good ratings even when there are two no-name AFC backwater teams who lose their starting QBs before halftime.

I'm not sure I completely buy the gambling/fantasy argument. Watching the game doesn't actually have an impact on how your players or team perform, and it's not as if you can't easily monitor that sort of thing by checking in online, or even in real-time via fantasy leagues' stat trackers. And it's not like a June baseball game whomps the NBA Finals, because the basketball fantasy season is already over.

Still, no one ever said gamblers were rational people, and this was the argument I heard most often.

But, guy who needed David Garrard to have a good game? Your team's not going anywhere.

Yankees fatigue:

Roland:

1) People are sick of the Yankees (and the Red Sox).
2) People are sick of their $40 million payroll team competing with the Yankees'
$200 million payroll. Where will Cliff Lee end up next year? With the Yankees or
Red Sox.

kiddicus_maximus:

Could have something to do with people actively hating the Yankees, and being completely ambivalent to the Jags & Titans.

Seriously. Fuck the Yankees.

Alexander:

I do not watch baseball anymore because I find it difficult to care
about a sport where the competitive balance is so out of whack. Put
another way, even if Cliff Lee and the Rangers manage to beat the
Yankees this year, he is likely to be a Yankee next year, the Rangers
are likely to be also-rans and the Yankees will be back for another
run with him and ten or so other 20 million dollar a year men to make
their assault on Mount 28, 29 or whatever number of titles it is that
they will have won after this year. Oh, and next year, the Rays won't
be a threat because they won't be able to sign their good players, so
we will be back to America's favorite baseball rivalry, Red
Sox-Yankees, where the Red Sox will try to depict themselves as plucky
little rivals while simultaneously obliterating all the AL teams that
don't wear navy blue pinstripes.

Meanwhile, the NFL always surprises. Cowboys at 1-4? Pats holding
their own without Moss? Steelers holding their own without Big Ben?
Ex dog fighter in QB controversy in Philly? And that is only a scoop
of the stories in the NFL this year, and we are only about a third of
the way through.

Ditkaphile:

Baseball has no one to blame but itself. I'm looking at you, Bud Selig. Two words = SALARY CAP.

This doesn't seem right either. MLB games consistently get higher ratings when teams like the Yankees or Red Sox are playing, and it's a bump that can't be explained solely by the local markets tuning in. Also, the Super Bowl doesn't suffer when the Colts or Steelers or Patriots make it.

TBS:

Lar:

I don't have cable and it was easier to find an illegal stream of MNF than it was the TBS playoffs. If I had a choice, I probably would have started on Monday Night Football then switched to baseball the instant Trent Edwards came into the game.

thehouserules:

I'm just turned off by the Ernie Johnson/James Woods announcing combo.

beastcoast:

having to watch the mlb playoffs on tbs makes me want to break every bone in my body. I hate Sager, that douchey piece of shit. The guy can barely form a sentence because the glue from his fucking wig is seeping into his brain and his stupid haggard ass suits are blinding him from the fucking teleprompter . The fact that he gets to sit front row at these playoff games is infuriating. Eckersley has that same stupid fucking 80's haircut and mustache, David Wells is just a fat piece of shit, and Ripken? Guy looks like a fucking cancer patient. And Ernie Johnson? Are you shitting me? "That's turrrrible Ernie."

I guess what I'm saying is I love baseball and I love football. But tbs sports coverage? Of the ALCS, no less...what a fucking joke

icy_one:

Even the worst booth team in football is better than the jack offs on TBS, who are just now witnessing baseball for the first time.

Jewish Okoye:

Guessing ESPN is in more households than TBS, or at least the channel number is memorized by more people because it's watched more. I don't remember what TBS' # is, I have to search the channel guide to find it.

ESPN does a much better job advertising MNF than TBS does advertising baseball. The only place I see ALCS ads is on TBS while watching the ALCS.

I heard this one more than I expected, and it makes a lot of sense. All fans have their preference in announcers, and NFL fans are going to hear the same crew every Monday, or every Sunday night. They're familiar, if annoying. EJ, Darling and Smoltz are competent, but it doesn't really feel like my team when they're calling the game.

Also, no one thinks TBS when they think baseball. At least not since the mid-90s, when the Braves game would come on after Captain Planet at 7:05.

Baseball is boring:

Max:

You know why I didn't watch ALCS game 3 last night? Because baseball
is fucking boring, and I'd rather be entertained while watching TV.
And while the MNF game last night was pretty bad, it was still more
entertaining than any baseball game could ever be.

Can-We-Trust-Bermuda:

Football is awesome. Baseball: not as awesome. The end. Baseball's season is so damn long. Just end it already.

Because baseball puts me to sleep. Football is more entertaining, plain and simple

Oof. This one's painful to hear for a baseball fan, but it's impossible to dispute that a ton of Americans feel this way. Baseball's slow. They don't hit each other. A defensive game looks like nothing's actually happening.

Does that make it boring? Not to its fans, obviously. But there's no sense in trying to convince people that they're wrong. Hockey and soccer fans do that. It's something fans of niche sports do. Baseball's still popular and historically relevant enough that it's not at that level, but you can't fight the tide. Football is far and away America's most popular sport, and though Nielsen ratings are certainly flawed, they're far from the only metric indicating this.

So watch what you want to watch. Don't worry about what everyone else is watching.